Hasker Metaphysics

1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8308-8997-6
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 132 Seiten

Reihe: Contours of Christian Philosophy

What is ultimately real? What is God like? Do human beings have minds and souls or only brains in bodies? Are humans free agents or are all human acts determined by prior circumstances? Through insightful analysis and careful evaluation, William Hasker helps readers answer these questions and thereby construct a world view to make sense of the universe and the people in it.

William Hasker (Ph.D., University of Edinburgh) is professor emeritus of philosophy at Huntington College in Huntington, Indiana. His books include Metaphysics: Constructing a World View; God, Time, and Knowledge; Reason and Religious Belief (with Michael Peterson, David Basinger and Bruce Reichenbach); The Openness of God (with Clark Pinnock, Richard Rice, John Sanders and David Basinger); Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings (edited with Michael Peterson, David Basinger and Bruce Reichenbach); The Emergent Self; Middle Knowledge: Theory and Applications (edited with David Basinger and Eef Dekker) and Providence, Evil and the Openness of God.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hasker, William

Leseproben

2

Freedom and
Necessity

We deeply desire to be free, but what is freedom? Is it a matter of being allowed to do whatever we choose? Does freedom mean primarily being able to choose our own government or our own personal lifestyle? Or is freedom mainly a matter of being safe from certain ominous and threatening evils—freedom from disease, from poverty, from oppression?

Freedom is of all these things and more, for “freedom” is a word with many meanings. There is political freedom, which is expressed and affirmed in such documents as the Magna Charta and the Declaration of Independence. There is economic freedom, currently the focus of so many social and political conflicts. There is emotional freedom, that happy state in which we are in touch with our own feelings and able to express them easily and naturally. There is the spiritual freedom of which the apostle Paul wrote so eloquently in the letter to the Romans.

Are We Really Free?

None of these kinds of freedom, however, is the focus of the present chapter; it is concerned rather with freedom of choice, or freedom of the will. Probably all of us have felt, as we have confronted some important decision, that it is entirely up to us how things will go. Soon the decision will be made and we will live with its consequences, but for now the future lies soft and malleable in our hands. And sometimes later, as we look back at such moments, they seem to be charged with immense importance. As Robert Frost said, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”1 We sense, as we look back at such turning points, that in those moments we determined our own destiny.

But is this really so? In making those significant choices, and innumerable lesser ones, were we, in fact, creating a future which remained indeterminate until we had made our choice? Or were we rather carrying out or enacting a scenario which had long before become inevitable, perhaps from the beginning of time? A great many reasons have been given why the experience of free choice cannot really be what it seems to be. Isn’t it absurd to say that when we make choices, there is no reason whatever why we choose one way rather than another? But if there is such a reason, then doesn’t this negate the idea that in making choices we, as it were, create our future out of nothing? And isn’t this talk of creating out of nothing something which verges on blasphemy? Only God has this power, and it is necessary to think of ourselves and all the events and decisions of our lives as lying entirely within his control. Omar Khayyám was a Muslim, but he spoke for a great many Christians when he wrote:

With earth’s first clay they did the last man knead,

And there of the last harvest sowed the seed:

And the first morning of creation wrote

What the last dawn of reckoning shall read.2

In addition to religious objections to freedom of choice, there are scientific considerations which suggest that our decisions are by no means as free as they seem. From psychology we learn about reinforcement and conditioning, and about childhood experiences which have made us what we are. From biology we learn of genetic determinants of behavior and of biochemical balances in the brain which determine everything from fleeting moods and emotions to our very sanity. From physics we learn to see ourselves, our society, our entire planet, as a tiny part of an inconceivably vast universe which is ruled throughout by immutable physical laws. Nowhere in this picture is there room for a person, an individual human being, who determines what shall take place in his own life without regard to the necessary relationships of cause and effect in the universe as a whole.

This, then, is the problem of freedom and necessity; it is a problem which arises because of the conflict between our sense of freedom and the many reasons which seem to suggest that our actions are not free but rather necessitated—by God, by fate, and by natural causes of various kinds. The problem is deeply fascinating considered merely as an intellectual question, but surely it is much more than this. Many people will tend to think of freedom of choice as something valuable, something which gives to their lives a significance which they would otherwise not possess. Others will see the belief in free will as an expression of pride and of absurd self-importance and will find deep satisfaction in the view that each thing we do and that happens to us is part of the immutable order of the universe.

It is very plausible to suppose that our belief that persons are responsible for their actions—that they deserve praise and reward when they do well, and blame and punishment when they do badly—can only be correct if it is also true that they are free in acting as they do, so that the action is not necessitated by anything other than the person’s own choice. But it may be replied that this belief in responsibility is itself a dangerous illusion, an illusion which at best tends to impede intelligent thought about the treatment of persons who manifest socially deviant behavior, and which at worst becomes a cloak for savage and irrational vengeance against those who have injured us. We hardly need to be reminded of how strong the feelings run on both sides of this issue.

So far we have been content to characterize the conflicting views in somewhat vague and imprecise ways, but in order to proceed we must from now on become more accurate. Let us define determinism as the view that for every event which happens, there are previous events and circumstances which are its sufficient conditions or causes, so that, given those previous events and circumstances, it is impossible that the event should not occur. Notice that the definition does not say anything specific about the nature of the previous events and circumstances which necessitate the given event. This is deliberately left open because there are several different varieties of determinism which take different views on this point. But they all agree in holding that everything which happens is necessitated.

In contrast with determinism, the view of those who affirm free will is libertarianism, defined as the view that some human actions are chosen and performed by the agent without there being any sufficient condition or cause of the action prior to the action itself. Notice that the definition claims that free actions have no sufficient cause, not that they lack causes and conditions altogether. If you offer to sell me your old car, and I decide to accept, then your making the offer is certainly a condition of my accepting it, and it may qualify as a partial cause of my acceptance. But it is not a sufficient cause, because it does not necessitate my acceptance. Even after you had offered, with all the other circumstances exactly as they were, it was still entirely within my power either to accept your offer or to reject it. Notice also that the definition does not claim that all human actions are free in this sense, but only that some are. It is quite possible for the libertarian to admit that in some cases (for instance, those in which there is overwhelmingly strong motivation pushing a person in one direction only) no action is possible other than the one which was actually taken. The determinist, on the other hand, claims that all actions are determined.

As we proceed we will add further qualifications and explanations of these two positions, as well as others. But these definitions are adequate for now.

Compatibilism: A Way Out?

In the discussion so far we have been assuming that there is a logical incompatibility between free will and determinism, so that accepting either one means giving up the other. Quite a number of philosophers, however, have questioned this assumption. The position of compatibilism, or soft determinism,3 holds that there is no logical inconsistency between free will and determinism, and that it is possible that human beings are free and responsible for their actions even though these actions are causally determined. This compatibilist view is “soft” determinism because it enables one to accept determinism without accepting the radical conclusions (denial of free will and moral responsibility) drawn by other (“hard”) determinists.

Now it is obvious that this position, if it is viable, offers great attractions. For many of us, at least, the belief that we are free and responsible persons seems extremely important; it is a belief we could give up only under extreme pressure, and even then only with a sense of great loss. On the other hand, we have also seen that there are weighty considerations favoring determinism, so we seem to be faced with a serious intellectual conflict. If, however, the apparent inconsistency between freedom and determinism is only apparent, the situation changes immediately. The preparations for all-out conflict can be replaced with an agreement for peaceful coexistence or détente.

But can the peace treaty be signed? It is clear that free will as defined by the libertarian cannot be reconciled with determinism, for one view affirms the existence of events which lack sufficient causal antecedents, while the other denies this possibility. So one would expect that, in order to maintain his thesis of compatibility, the soft determinist must be defining “freedom” in some other way.

This is indeed the case. According to compatibilism, a human action is free if it...